Relationship How do you forgive your partner cheated on you?

[Whistler]

Good afternoon,

I recently learned recently that my partner with CPTSD have slept with her best friend and 5 others persons thru the 2 last years in same time she that we were dating each others. I learn the new less then 2 weeks after we got engaged and for adding to it 2 days after i learn she is pregnant of our child.

The last 2 years have been up and down, she did a lot of pushing telling me she was too afraid to let me in but in reality she was sleeping with other mens.

Now im at the point were we trying to talk all the pain i passed thru during the last 2 years for be with her compound and come adding in the balance of the arguments when we have some. I dont like the fact that happening and im would like to know how i can find a way to move on.

I dont want imagine my life with her beside me. I still love her, i just cant find a way to process my feeling

 

[Friday]

If my exHusband had ever stopped cheating I might be able to share how I forgave him. As I certainly tried in the beginning. But he didn’t stop. So after the 3rd of 4th time? I quit getting angry, and just started charging him 10k per affair, plus a clean STD test before I’d sleep with him, again.

That was the only way I could stay married to a man who clearly didn’t love me. By taking the other two areas of hurt & betrayal off the table: that he was spending money on them, while his wife and child were at home struggling to make ends meet; and not allowing him to kill or infect with lifelong disease either myself &/or our children.

 

[Sideways]

I dont want imagine my life with her beside me

This is the issue, though, yeah? You're imagining a life you might have together. It's imaginary - it isn't, and hasn't been, the reality of what you actually have with this person.

I'm big on loving people for who they are, not who we want them to be, or aspire for them to be. The person she is, is someone who has committed about the worst kind of betrayal against your relationship as is possible. And she's been doing it over and over.

There's grief that comes from this. And it's awful. But at least it's the emotional fallout to what is real, rather than emotions that are trapped in delusions of what we might wish for. The grief is not that you might lose her, but that the relationship you wanted never really existed in the first place.

Where there is no coercion or necessity involved, it speaks to a person's self worth when they persist with a relationship founded on betrayal. There is compassion required in this situation, but it is not compassion for the other, but for yourself.

This is not the relationship that you have thought it was. She is not the person you thought she was. Do you persist with that imaginary narrative, or confront the grief head on, and give yourself the compassion due to someone who is worth more?

 

[arfie]

if you don't want to imagine your life with her by your side, the forgiveness still points to an exit sign. the forgiveness accomplishes nothing more than allowing yourself the inner peace of letting go of the bitterness.

 

[Sweetpea76]

There are two types of people. People who think cheating is justifiable, and people who think it’s wrong. She doesn’t think it’s wrong. She cheated with 6 men in 2 years. That’s a pattern of behavior.